


My Home Is Where You Are

by capn_hoozits



Series: Sons of the Desert [10]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: F/M, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-17 16:23:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16099355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capn_hoozits/pseuds/capn_hoozits
Summary: Sequel toThe Fountain. The story, as told by my OC Dejan Shua, of how he and a group of kids who fell under his care managed to escape the Ishvalan genocide and survive the subsequent exile. Pretty much all OCs, with appearances by at least a few canon characters.Uvar left his books for a moment and crossed the room over to me. "Haven't you heard?"Apparently I hadn't, and I said so.The priest grabbed me by the arm and pulled me farther into the room. "Now that you're here, perhaps you'd better stay out of sight for a moment." Uvar gave me a grim look. "The Amestrian military has gone to terrible means to crush us. They have sent in their alchemists to wield their ungodly abilities. There is nothing we can do against such a force. You need to get your family away from here as quickly as you can!





	1. 1901-1908, or thereabouts…

**Author's Note:**

> This is a somewhat specialized fic, being very OC-heavy. I'm going to try to squeeze in at least a few canon characters, and it is set within the canon parameters of FMA Manga/Brotherhood. I had mentioned in "The Day The Circus Came To Town" that my OC Dejan Shua had written a book about how he got out of Ishval with a group of kids who would eventually become his musical ensemble. I am not going to try to write his entire book, but I'm going to present these chapters as "excerpts." I hope you like it.

They say time heals all wounds. Like of lot of old sayings that "they" say, it's true sometimes. The only reason I can even bear to look back on those dark times is because of where I'm looking back at them from. I got here by means of a long, plodding journey that I wasn't sure would end. If I'd had no one left to live for, I would have run up to the first bluecoat and invited him to shoot me.

When the war started in 1901, my family and I managed to keep out of the way. We lived in a part of Ishval that nobody, even the Amestrians, cared that much about. That's what we hoped, anyway. A few of our neighbors, other _vatrishi_ , took up arms against the Amestrian military and wound up dead for their efforts and possibly diverted the attention of the bluecoats our way. They already knew we were here because many of them had patronized Vashto's tavern. But unlike similar establishments in Ishval Proper (minus the "extra" services, if you catch my drift), Vashto's wasn't a meeting place for political dissenters and the like. Men came there to drink and get laid. Nothing else. Vashto didn't allow politics to walk through his door. He was high-minded like that.

Still, I was worried about repercussions. This wasn't just some kind of little family squabble. If the Amestrians won, which they probably would, they could take it out on all our hides. Dad told me to stop worrying.

At one point we were approached by a couple of stalwart fellows from the Ishvalan resistance to help run guns up from Aerugo. Dad told them to piss off. They called him a coward and a traitor (which he was not) and a few worse things besides (which he might have been). He told them that if the only time they stopped looking down their noses at us was to talk us into doing their dirty work for them, they might as well talk to the moon. Then he cracked their heads together.

Not all of the "proper" Ishvalans looked down on us, of course. Andakar Ruhad, a fresh young priest and my first ever friend, was a frequent visitor to the _vatrishi_ . He didn't try to change us, didn't make us feel small because of who we were, didn't make us feel beholden to him for his charity. He treated us like equals even though he was one of the quality.

But as the war dragged on, we began to see less of him. His bright, luminous conviction went grim. I knew that he and his fellow priests had been called upon to practice the fiercer side of their vocation. When he did come by, he didn't talk about it.

Even through all this, life went on. Sometimes the fighting would lull enough for us to make a little cash, playing at weddings and the like. People still fell in love and got married and had kids. Other people, like us, didn't always do those things in that order.

Dad and I managed to slap on another room to our little house and Katri laid claim to it. Even so, we were still at fairly close quarters. She entered adulthood with a wild beauty and a mean right hook for a little thing. She sometimes had some nasty mood swings, poor lass. I loved her, in my way. We'd grown up together and were used to each other.

Shua could be a patient man, and he was very protective of Katri, but sometimes he just had to throw his hands up. He was generally too busy anyway, making halmi and playing the fiddle or trying to work some sort of scheme with Vashto to make a few extra cenz. So I was the one who was there to buffer Katri against whatever demons she was battling, whether she needed someone to scream at or a shoulder to cry on. I did what I could to give her what she needed.

Well, that's kind of how things happened. She didn't actually like me, but somehow I caught her in a rare tender moment—not on purpose, mind you! I never took advantage!—and nature just sort of took over. Sweet Ishvala, but she was a fierce one! Not like either of us had had any previous experience to compare each other to.

Shortly thereafter, though, she chased me out her room. I stumbled into the front room and practically straight into my dad, who had just come home. A moment later, as Dad and I stood staring at each other, Katri tossed my clothes out after me. I thought Dad would be furious, but he just kinked up an eyebrow, gave a little snort of a laugh and shook his head.

"Congratulations," was all he said.

Things went on like this for a few years, not changing much. As far as the war was concerned, things would get tense for a while, then simmer down, then flare up again. Katri was much the same. Some days she wanted me and some days she couldn't stand the sight of me. Then she got pregnant. She had consulted with the _falshaii_ , one of whom was her mother, and they seemed to have come to a consensus of opinion. Katri cried at first, then hit me, then cried some more.

"Look what you done to me, Dejan!" she sobbed. "You stupid _yaakhtai_!"

Shua rolled his eyes. "Seems to me you're as much at fault as he is, _laleh_!"

"Shut up!" Katri shrieked back at him.

"Don't you back sass me!"

"Dad, don't!" I pleaded. I was twenty by this time and nearly as tall as my dad now. He tended to listen to me a little more. Not much, but sometimes. I stepped up to Katri and put my hands on her shoulders. She yanked herself away but I wouldn't give up. I took her arms again and she just stood there glaring at me, her face and her hair wet with tears. "Listen to me, Katri," I said, keeping my voice low and calm. "I'm gonna take care of you, just like I always have. Everything's gonna be all right!"

She looked up at me and I was surprised to see real sorrow along with that anger. "How's it gonna be all right, Dejan!" Her lower lip shook. "This—this ain't no world to bring a baby into!"

Part of me couldn't argue with that. Since she wasn't in as much of a pugnacious mood at the moment, I pulled her close to me and held her. "The world's been like this for a long time, _laleh_ ," I said, talking softly into her hair. "We've just gotta hope that our baby's gonna grow up to be someone who can help change things. We've gotta have faith."

Katri gave an ungraceful snort. "You sound like Andakar!" she grumbled into my shirt. She didn't like Andakar, but when she spoke, she didn't sound so upset anymore.

Shua chuckled and tousled my hair. "He could do worse," he said before leaving us to ourselves.

* * *

Andakar got that look. All I could do was shrug.

"I haven't even tried to ask her," I said. "She's not talking to me right now." I spread my hands to show the futility of it. "We're not the quality!"

He let out a huff. "That makes no difference!" he retorted. "There are no grades of quality! We are all—"

"—the same in the eyes of God," I finished for him with a bit of an eye roll, then grinned. "I'm not really all that worried about what Ishvala thinks." Andakar looked a little scandalized and I went on. "I've got enough faith to see this for the blessing it is. But I promise, if Katri ever decides I'm worth getting spliced to, you'll be the first to know. After me, that is."

He smiled a little, which was good to see, because he didn't do it so much anymore. "I would be honored to offer my services."

"I'd be honored to have them," I replied. "If she does actually say yes, I hope you can get here quick because she could change her mind the next minute."

Andakar nodded, acknowledging Katri's mercurial nature. "If there's anything I can do for you, please let me know."

With all that in mind, I broached the subject to Katri a couple of times. She looked at me like I had a tree growing out of my head. I supposed she had too much else on her mind.

Some months later, our daughter was born. A few of the _falshaii_ came to do the necessary, chasing me and Shua out of the house. I could hear Katri shrieking and cursing me, my ancestors, my body parts, and the very air I breathed. Shua gave up and went to find solace at Vashto's. I stuck close by as a dutiful father ought to.

I wanted to call our baby Maya, after my mother, but Dad wasn't ready for that. Katri was the one who actually came up with Mika. It just popped into her head and I liked it. Oh, but she was a sweet baby. Sure, she was a lusty crier, but that just meant her lungs worked fine.

Katri was a distracted sort of mother. Not a bad one, mind you. She loved our baby as much as I did, but I think she was a little scared of her. She fed Mika just fine and held her sometimes, but left much of the rest of the work to me. I didn't mind at all. I took to it like a bee to nectar. If Mika got sick, I would take her either to _baata_ Nifaa or even all the way to the Kanda temple to Saahad Uvar, who remembered me kindly. He even weighed and measured Mika for me, keeping a record to see how well she was growing, which she did like a little weed.

The subject of asking for Ishvala's blessing on our union would still come up now and again. I finally played a high card and told Katri that if we were married, Mika could have a proper _chuvai_ , something that she would be old enough for quite soon, when she turned three. Didn't she want that for our little girl? She could marry some nice fellow who had a proper craft and have a decent life. Katri scoffed, saying that the decent fellows with proper crafts were all getting killed by the bluecoats. But I could tell the idea stuck with her.

Finally, one day, she came and punched me in the arm. "Fine!" she growled. "I'll do it for Mika!"

It took me a minute to figure out what she was talking about, coming out of the blue as it did, but not wanting to irritate her by acting stupid, I fled to the Kanda temple and told Andakar.

He was pleased and said that he had anticipated it would happen. He was a man of strong faith, after all. But what he meant was that he had asked his Aunt Zoya to make a _chuva_ for Mika, just in case. He also had her make one for me, if Shua was willing,

I stood agape for a couple of moments. "Can you do that? I mean, you do know that my parents weren't married."

Andakar, who was generally a stickler for this sort of thing, replied, "That's true, but as your mother is now in Ishvala's bosom, that point can be…stretched."

Now my mouth dropped a little more, but this time from mocking astonishment. Andakar had to chuckle a little. "I asked Saahad Bozidar a while ago, just in case. It's not entirely without precedent."

I let out a laugh and hugged him.

So I set about the preparations as quickly as I could. It wasn't going to be a grand affair by any means, but it was the sort of thing that drew out our neighbors—the ones who were still alive—to join us. Ishvala knows we had little else to celebrate.

Andakar came to do the honors, and, much to our surprise, so did some of his family. Not his parents, of course, but his brother, Mattas, and his cousins, Damyan, Naisha, and Vesya. We had met them several times at festivities that Dad and I had played at, but I didn't expect them to take such an interest in us. But that's Ishvalans for you. Good fortune is meant to be shared, and we had precious little of it back in those days. Also, Andakar's cousins were the ones who delivered the _chuvas_ that their mother had made. They also brought food to share, which was a real treat.

So first came my _chuvai _. I didn't think I would be nervous, but I was. I didn't think it would affect my dad as much as it would, but it did. We both teared up when he set that sash over my shoulder and spoke the prayer.__

__"I claim this child as mine in the name of the Creator Ishvala!"_ _

__We hugged as everyone around us cheered. This was not a common occurrence in our neck of the woods._ _

__I now had the right to take on a family name. Since Dad only had the one, that's the one I took, and I became Dejan Shua. Now I could bestow that name on my wife and on my little girl, and she could wear her _chuva _with as much pride as I did mine.___ _

____We played and sang and danced. Mika, a spunky toddler, joined right in on everything. She really wanted to pound away on my drum, and Dad told me that I may as well start teaching her now. It was a family tradition after all._ _ _ _

____Katri wasn't exactly a blushing bride, but nobody expected her to be. She didn't exactly enjoy herself either, and at one point she burst into tears, unable to explain why. Andakar's cousins, Naisha and Vesya, scooped her into their arms and fussed over her and comforted her, and she didn't seem to mind._ _ _ _

____I guess it was a pretty grand celebration after all._ _ _ _

____It wasn't too long after that that all hell broke loose. It was 1908, and the little family that we had worked so hard to keep together got torn apart._ _ _ _


	2. 1908, a Friday, I think

There are some who say that talking about some exquisitely painful memory will somehow help you get over it. Sometimes those memories are so painful you can't even put them into words. I lost my wife and my father all in one day. My recollection of that particular day is patchy, which doesn't help in trying to retell it, but believe me, it's a mercy.

I'm not sure what first started it off. Maybe it was when _baata_ Nifaa went to Ishvala's bosom. She had to be pushing a hundred, after all. She wasn't able to get around so well anymore, so I made a point of checking on her pretty much every day and making sure her chickens were fed and her garden got watered and to make sure she was still with us. Well, one morning she wasn't, poor dear.

I fetched Andakar to come and help us bury her (we had a proper graveyard for our folk now). There was then some discussion about Nifaa's things. Before I even got a chance to say anything, it was more or less decided by everyone else that my family should get the chickens. I had taken care of them, after all. So we moved the birds and their coop to behind our house.

So the chickens fed us and we fed the chickens. We gave them whatever scraps we could spare, tossed them bugs whenever we came across any, and also fed them proper chicken feed when we could get it. They were pretty good layers, so now and again I would go into Ishval Proper and sell any extra eggs.

For whatever reason, or no reason at all, Katri was in a really dark mood one day and just stormed off to be by herself. Dad had wandered off as well, not giving me a clear explanation as to where he was going. So it was just me and Mika. I gathered up about half a dozen eggs, set them in a basket and took them and my little girl into town.

I had decided that, rather than try to sell the eggs, I would give them to the Kanda Temple. They had been awfully good to us since I first got to know them. As I got into Kanda, though, I thought that maybe this wasn't such a good idea. I knew the fighting had escalated, but I hadn't realized it had gotten this bad, living out of the way like we did. I had seen smoke from a distance, but it looked like it was more in the direction of Daliha. I could hear explosions and yelling and screaming. I wasn't really sure what to do at this point, whether to head back or press forward. I figured I would take refuge at the temple until the fighting had died down and maybe get some news about how bad things were.

I hurried along, Mika bouncing on my hip, her little arms tight around my neck, flinching whenever she heard gunshots or explosions in the distance (which was getting less and less distant). "Daddy, I'm scared!" she whispered.

"It's okay, baby," I assured her, even though it was pretty clear that it wasn't. "We're going to go see _Saahad_ Andakar and _Saahad_ Uvar!"

This seemed to sit well with her. People were starting to stream past us, carrying as many of their worldly possessions as they could. It was looking more and more like a good idea. As soon as I got back, and assuming Dad and Katri had come home, I would strongly recommend that we pack up and get clear of this place while we could.

We made it to the Kanda Temple in one piece, but the place looked deserted. I was really hoping to find Andakar here, but considering all the upheaval going on, he was probably off fighting. I poked my head into the infirmary and found Uvar hastily gathering up books and knotting them into a bag. He looked up at me with shock.

"Dejan! What on earth are you doing here?"

"I…uh…" Somehow the idea of offering him a basket of eggs seemed pretty ridiculous now.

Uvar left his books for a moment and crossed the room over to me. "Haven't you heard?"

Apparently I hadn't, and I said so.

The priest grabbed me by the arm and pulled me farther into the room. "Now that you're here, perhaps you'd better stay out of sight for a moment." Uvar gave me a grim look. "The Amestrian military has gone to terrible means to crush us. They have sent in their alchemists to wield their ungodly abilities. There is nothing we can do against such a force. You need to get your family away from here as quickly as you can!"

I dropped the eggs. All I could think about was getting back home, but Uvar cautioned me to wait a little. We could hear more explosions not too far away, and knowing now what might be causing them made my blood run cold. As soon as it quieted a little, I was out the door and away from the temple, heading south. I can barely remember how I even got through the streets without dropping Mika or getting crushed or shot at or whatever. There were shouts and screams of panic all around me and I spent a lot of time ducking in and out of alleys and behind barricades or whatever I could hide behind.

I was turning a corner when I nearly slammed into somebody. It was Weza, Katri's mother, one of the _falshaii_. Her clothes were ragged and dirty and tears had left streaks through the dust on her face. She saw me and clapped a hand over her mouth.

"Oh, God, Dejan!" she sobbed.

Now, these were hard women and it took a lot to make them cry. "What?" I demanded. "What?"

Weza leaned against me. "I saw…I saw Katri…"

"Where?" That's where I needed to be.

"She got shot, Dejan! Them bluecoat _yaakhtaii_ got her! I s-saw it happen!" Weza heaved in a breath a coughed. "She was screamin' and throwin' rocks at 'em so the bastards shot her!" She pressed her hand against Mika's cheek. Mika, thank God, wasn't sure what was going on, but she was starting to pull a face like she was going to cry. Seeing other people cry did that to her. "Be a good girl, little Mika!" Weza told her. "Be good for Daddy!"

And then she ran off. I was frozen to the spot for a moment, trying to get what I had just been told to stop clanging around in my head and start making sense. My wife was dead. She was dead and I couldn't do anything about it. I couldn't even go back and and find her and give her a proper burial because I had to get my surviving family the hell out of Ishval.

So I started running. I no longer had the luxury of hiding in alleyways because there were fewer and fewer buildings that were actually standing. It was beginning to seem like an eternity since I first got here. With the smoke and the dust casting a haze across the sky, it was hard to tell what time it was.

Part of me wishes I hadn't gone the way I did, but maybe Ishvala was guiding my steps. I don't think He meant to be cruel by making me see what I saw. Maybe it was a kindness, after all, so I would have a chance to say good-bye.

I just about tripped over Shua curled up on the ground, gripping his belly. I nearly seized up and fell to my knees but I had too much forward momentum to do that. As I got close, I could see how blood-soaked his shirt was. Now I dropped down. I didn't know how the hell I was going to carry him and Mika back to the temple or if there would even be anyone left there to help.

Dad could probably tell by the look on my face that all this was going through my mind. "Forget it, Dejan!" he muttered through his teeth. "You just get your baby and your woman and your skinny brown ass out of here!"

"Dad—no—" I was nearly sobbing by this time. Mika started whimpering, too scared even to cry at this point.

"Damn…damn you…don't be stupid, _lahaat_!" Dad lifted a hand to push me away, but couldn't raise it high enough.

I grabbed his hand and pressed it to my forehead, facing the cold reality of what I had to do and feeling my heart break over it. "Ishvala bless you, Dad!" I managed to strangle out. "I love you!"

Dad chuckled weakly. "I love you, too." He grinned that little grin of his, even though blood stained his teeth. "Come up with a song about me and I'll live forever." His face tightened with pain. "Now be…a good…good son…and go…"

I couldn't even see him anymore through my tears, but I had said and done all I could. I now had to keep my baby girl whole and out of harm's way and by Ishvala I was going to do it.

I really didn't know where to go. I just started running, following the flow of people that I fell in with. It occurred to me that I might manage to catch sight of Andakar, but I never did. Oddly enough, though, as I was dodging past a cluster of people who were hesitating, trying to decide which of their possessions to leave behind, I ran into one of Andakar's cousins. It was Damyan, the oldest. He was a tall lad, just about to turn twenty. He looked a lot like his cousin Mattas, Andakar's brother.

"Dejan!" he cried, grabbing me by the shoulders. "Thank Ishvala! Have you seen Yasna?"

Yasna was his sweetheart. They were hoping to get married, but that was one wedding I wouldn't be playing at any time soon. "No, I haven't," I told him. "I'm just trying to get out of here!"

As much of a hurry as I was in, there was something comforting about seeing a familiar, friendly face, especially on somebody who wasn't dying. I wasn't sure if there was safety in numbers right now, but I figured we might as well stick together. At least if something happened to me, Damyan could take Mika.

Damyan nodded. "Us too!"

Being in a similar state, I hadn't noticed just how scared and close to panic Damyan was. "Where are your folks?"

He jerked his head off to one side. "I've got my sisters hiding in a house that was already blown up." He sucked in a harsh breath and coughed out a sob. Just like me, he was trying to keep himself together when everything was inviting us to do the opposite. "My parents…"

I shook my head. He didn't have to elaborate. Now wasn't the time. We were starting to hold up the flow of people fleeing and had to step back out of the way, searching the faces of those who passed by. It was a good thing we did, as it turned out, because not three minutes had gone past before Damyan let out a cry and bolted forward into the crowd. He and a girl with a sack over her back grabbed at each other, and Damyan pulled her along back to where I was. They were followed by three other young folk.

I didn't ask for introductions. I knew Yasna, of course, and I recognized at least a couple of the others as friends of Damyan's. Dark misfortune had thrown us all together and made us a family. "Right! Let's go get your sisters."

The lad gave a quick nod and I followed him. I didn't really know what I was doing. I just sent up a prayer to let Ishvala guide my feet. We didn't have to go far to where his sisters, Naisha and Vesya, were huddling in the lee corner of a destroyed house, their arms around each other. They each gave a little squeak as we ran up.

"Yasna!" Vesya gasped. "Thank Ishvala you're all right!"

"Dejan!" Naisha stared at me. "Where is—"

I waved my hand quickly. "We need to move!" I told them. I took a quick stock of the situation. There were, at this point, seven faces gazing back at me, just as lost and frightened as I was. But I was the oldest (not by an awful lot) and they were looking to me for some sort of guidance. "Right!" I declared with a firm decisiveness I wasn't feeling. "Let's head out through the _vatrishi_ camps. There's hardly anyone there and there aren't any buildings to speak of for the Ammies to blow up."

I had another motive besides finding safety. If we were being forced from our homes, we would need some wherewithal to live. I had a bit of money stashed at my house, which I hoped was still standing. And between my dad and I, we had a collection of instruments that I really didn't want to leave behind to the Amestrians' tender mercies.

Keeping in as tight a cluster as we could, we managed to not get lost or separated. We also managed to somehow grow in numbers. Someone in our group would spot some young friend, probably orphaned, and gather them into our company. By the time we hit the edge of South Kanda, we had grown to about a dozen.

It seemed as though we'd left the worse behind us, but as we got into the _vatrishi_ camps, we started to trip over bodies. I urged everyone to keep going, trying to keep my own wits about me. We reached my house and we crowded inside.

"Could we hide in here?" one of the kids asked, her voice shaking.

"Not for long," Damyan warned. "It's like…it's like they're trying to wipe us out!"

That had apparently not occurred to some of them and as if it wasn't bad enough, the enormity of our plight seemed to weigh on them that much more. One girl fell to her knees, sobbing. Naisha bent down to give the girl's shoulders a gentle shake. "Eyla! There's no time for that now! We need to keep our heads!"

Hoping to help out (and hoping to get some help out of it) I grabbed my finger drum from the side of my bed and thrust it into the girl's hands. "Here! I need you to carry this for me!" She stared at it for a moment, uncomprehending. "It's been my bread and butter for years," I explained. "Now it'll be ours, but we have to get out of here!"

She nodded slowly and took the drum, hugging it like a doll. She stopped crying.

"What can I do?" Naisha asked briskly.

I handed Mika over to the nearest person, one of the boys, Stoyan. "Hold her for a minute, all right?"

Nodding, Stoyan gathered Mika into his arms with a grave solemnity that I would always come to associate with him. Mika twined her arms around his neck and held on.

I glanced around and snatched the blanket off my bed. "See that wooden chest there?" I said to Naisha, pointing to the wall next to the door. A couple of the kids had sat down on it to rest. Naisha waved them off and opened the chest. It was a sort of larder and catch-all. It was also where I stored my money. "Take everything out of there and wrap it up in this." I tossed her the blanket and she set to work.

While she did that I snatched up all the instruments we had around the house, a couple of lutes, my other drum, two flutes, two bagpipes neatly rolled up, and handed them off to the kids, giving them something to take care of and take their minds off their fear. I went into my dad's room. His fiddle hung from a peg on the wall and I stared at it for a moment.

A long time ago Dad had warned me that if I touched his fiddle without his permission he'd break my arm. I knew he wouldn't really do that, but I still never crossed him. Just because he was probably dead, that didn't give me the right to go against his wishes. So I left it. Fortunately, Vashto had given his fiddle to Dad to fix and it was sitting right there on the bed along with its bow. So I grabbed it. I didn't feel the same sort of obligation to Vashto, despite our long acquaintance.

I then hurried into Katri's room and gathered up Mika's few clothes and toys into a sheet, then added my own things before knotting up the whole thing.

"Right!" I said finally. "Let's get moving!"

We headed out of my little house and I figured to head roughly southwest, maybe toward Aerugo. But as we turned the corner, a trio of bluecoats who must have been waiting nearby came out from behind the house to block our way. One had a rifle and the other two held pistols. All three were pointed at us. The kids all let out screams and grabbed onto each other.

The soldiers cocked their weapons. Mika was still in Stoyan's arms and I looked at her. It was so damn unfair. I had told Katri that our baby could be someone who helped change the world and now she would never get the chance.

I looked the middle soldier in the eye. He had more stripes on his shoulders than the other two, so I pegged him for an officer. He was wearing glasses, but I could still see the exhaustion and the despair in his eyes. You could tell he'd had his fill of this damn war.

Also, he hesitated. The other two seemed to be taking their cue from him, holding their weapons tensely and glancing at him. The fellow with the rifle looked particularly trigger-happy.

I took a gamble, raising my hands and addressing the officer. "Don't do this, please!" I urged. "These are just kids! You've already killed their parents! Haven't they been punished enough?"

He tightened the hold on his gun, but I could see the conflict in his eyes.

I clutched at one last desperate gamble. "Look, go ahead and shoot me if you have to!" I cried, ignoring the pleas and the gasps behind me. "Just let the kids go!"

The officer flinched and stared at me, the tension draining out of his face, leaving a terrible sorrow. He slowly lowered his gun.

"Captain Hughes!" the soldier with the rifle hissed angrily. He looked ready and willing to open fire.

"Shut up, Wilkins!" Captain Hughes snarled back. He turned to me, the conflict in his expression slowly changing to a new resolve. "Clear out!" he said quickly in a low voice. "Fast as you can! I'll cover you but I can't do it for long."

I didn't waste any time babbling my relief, ready to push past them. But Wilkins raised his rifle at us. "Captain, we have orders!"

"Drop it, Wilkins!" the other soldier growled. "Captain Hughes is giving the orders here."

Wilkins still wasn't having it. He considered the other two, then swung his rifle at the captain. "You know, a lot of officers are getting shot by their own subordinates."

Before Hughes even had time to react, the other soldier calmly pointed his gun at Wilkins and put two bullets into his chest. The kids shrieked and cringed back, staring as Wilkins crumpled to the ground.

The soldier calmly holstered his pistol. "Damn snipers," he mumbled.

Hughes let out a long, slow breath. "Poor Wilkins. Never saw it coming."

The other soldier allowed himself a small, grim smile. "No, he didn't."

We were rooted to the spot, not sure of what was going on and too afraid to venture any movement. Hughes gave me a hard look and pointed toward the south. "Get those kids out of here! There shouldn't be another patrol through here for a while, but I can't guarantee that. Now, hurry!"

I drew in a quick breath to speak, but Hughes held up his hand. "No! Don't thank me or anything! Just go!"

Now we couldn't move fast enough. I didn't dare look back, but I called over my shoulder, "Let the chickens loose!"

I could only hope that they would.

Night was falling by this time but we kept moving, following along the network of creek beds that only saw water a few weeks out of the year. The soft sand muffled our steps. We kept on like that until long after dark. I had no idea what time it was or how long we had actually traveled or where we even were. But we finally came to a halt. It was quiet here. No gunshots, no explosions, no screaming. Everyone just dropped, exhausted.

I sat on the ground, carefully laying down my burdens, my sack of possessions and my instruments. Now that it was quiet and we were relatively safe, at least from the Amestrians, I had a moment to take stock of the situation.

Which was a mistake. Half my family was gone. Half my reason for living was gone. _Baata_ Nifaa had once told me that what Ishvala takes away with one hand, He gives with the other. Well, right now, He sure as hell seemed to be playing His hand close to His chest because He had nothing to show.

I looked over at Mika, who was now asleep in Stoyan's arms. She had no mother. I had no father. We were all lost, cast away like the fluff from a dandelion, floating along with no guide, at the tight-assed mercy of the world.

I started to cry. All these kids were looking to me for protection or guidance or answers or something and right at the moment, I had nothing. I started crying, loud and hard, and I couldn't stop. Mika woke up and started crying, too, but I had no comfort to give her.

I felt a pair of arms wrap around me, then another. I felt hands pressed against my back. No one told me to stop crying. No one even said anything. They just silently offered me what little strength they had left. 

Well, maybe the hand Ishvala offered me wasn't so empty after all.


End file.
